The Hummingbird's Cage

by Tamara Dietrich

  She shook her head. “I’d say wasn’t nothin’ of family left in Dunleith but what they planted in the old Baptist cemetery, but even that ain’t there no more. A few years ago, they up and moved it.”

  “Excuse me?” I said. “They moved the cemetery?”

  “The church house, anyway—loaded it on flatbeds and drove down the gravel road to Long Switch. Wasn’t no congregation no more—folks died off or left. So a big company come and turned the land to crops.”

  “What’d they do with the people buried there?” I asked.

  “Not a blessed thing.”

  I wasn’t sure she understood me. “I mean, before they started plowing—what did they do with the bodies in the cemetery?”

  Lula braced her forearms on the table and leaned toward me, her smile indulgent.

  “Honey, they left ’em. Said they wasn’t no bodies. I know for a fact that cemetery started out back in the slave days. Wasn’t much used after that but by a few old families. When I was young, they was a boy sweet on me—he’s there. His great-grandmother, too—she had the sugar. By the time the company come, grave markers was mostly gone. Onliest thing left was that ol’ beat-down church, and land turnin’ wild like it was back when the Indians had it.”

  “You mean . . . they’re farming the graveyard?”

  Lula nodded. “Soybeans mostly. Some cotton.”

  It was a horrifying image—furrows dug, seeds planted, then roots growing down, down toward bones lying six feet under, smooth as those stones Olin pulls from his fields every spring.

  Lula leaned toward me again. “Don’t you fret none—they’s more to eternal rest than where your bones are planted. It don’t make the situation less despisable to me, but ain’t a thing to be done but get on with life.”

  She sat back with a smile and asked if we had chocolate cake for dessert. She had a thick slice and a cup of coffee before wrapping her scarf back around her head and picking up her gloves. She paid her bill and turned to leave, but before she got to the door she stopped to throw her arms around my neck.

  “You take care of yourself,” she said. “Your little daughter, too.”

  Her earnestness startled me. But it wasn’t until the café had closed for the day, the farmhouse chores were finished, Laurel was tucked in and I was back in my room readying for bed that it struck me:

  I hadn’t told Lula I had a daughter.

  Rain, Rain, Come

  I’d been working in the vegetable garden for a good hour when I stood to give my back a stretch. The air was listless and hot. We’d gone nearly two weeks without a good soaking, and the plants weren’t the only things feeling it. I fingered the wilting butterhead lettuce in my basket, then looked up, eager for signs of weather. But the clouds were as thick and dry as cotton batting, and stalled out.

  I licked at my parched lips as sweat slid down my back. I was about to head inside for a drink of water when a notion struck that stopped me short.

  I turned toward the same field where Olin had stood the morning of the quilting bee—so motionless and unyielding he might have been carved from his own fieldstone, looking for all the world like a man with a purpose. And when he was done, a thunderstorm had swept through this valley.

  Olin was a man of many skills; was rainmaking one of them?

  Tentatively I looked around, but no one was in sight. I closed my eyes.

  So . . . what does a rainmaker say? What does a rainmaker think?

  Does she think rain and the clouds come? Can thoughts get caught in an updraft, pulling in water vapor, seeding the atmosphere until they’re plumped up and ready to fall as raindrops?

  Suddenly the absurdity of the moment—standing in a garden, trying to catalyze a downpour—cut me to the quick. I felt like a grown woman caught playing hopscotch. I opened my eyes.

  But there was more to it than mere discomfiture. While a part of me knew, all evidence to the contrary, that conjuring up a storm was a load of hocus-pocus, still another was sure that even if it were possible, it wasn’t child’s play. It couldn’t be.

  And yet . . .

  I turned toward the Mountain. A prickle ran up my spine as I sensed it looking back, as if taking my measure. Curious to see what I could do.

  Skepticism? Or a challenge?

  I set my basket at my feet and shut my eyes again.

  This time I didn’t think—not in words, anyway. Instead, I pictured the sky overhead just as it was—a palette of white and blue, the sun a brilliant ball radiating ferocious heat and light. The images clicked into place almost willfully, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  Then I added a rain cloud. Just one.

  I concentrated with all I had to shape it, sculpt it. To make it realer than real. I made it darker than the others—gray as granite, and swelling with moisture. I placed it just at the sharp arête of the Mountain. Heavier and heavier it grew—until it was so swollen, so heavy, it couldn’t keep its altitude anymore. It began to sink . . . skimming lower and lower . . . whipping down the Mountain slope . . . out of control now and picking up speed . . . making for the garden . . . for me . . .

  My eyes flew open and I was startled to find I was panting, struggling to catch my breath. Sweat was running down my face, the salt of it stinging my eyes. I used my shirttail to wipe it away.

  I glanced up again, and the sky was just as it had been. The Mountain . . . still vigilant.

  But what was that hugging the ridge?

  It was a cloud like the others—only this one was not quite so white, not quite so high. Its underbelly was a pigeon gray, as if a charcoal pencil had only begun to shade it in.

  Even as I watched, the cloud began to shred and dissipate. Fainter and fainter, until finally it dissolved into the same thin air it was made of.

  As if it had never been there at all.

  Nastas

  Olin had built a freestanding fireplace and grill on the patio behind the house, with a pumice stone core and faced with sandstone flags. Jessie said they used it deep into winter, bundling up like Eskimos. There was no need to bundle yet—it was only the end of August, according to Jessie, although I couldn’t see how she kept track. The two of them owned no calendar—Olin said there was nothing a calendar could tell him that the elements couldn’t.

  “Except birthdays,” Laurel said.

  “That’s what the wife’s for,” said Olin.

  Simon suggested a barbecue, and he’d bring the venison steaks. By now Saturday suppers were settling into routine, and no longer a cause for panic. I still left the bulk of the conversation to the others—I’m not garrulous by nature, but can appreciate those who are. Even Laurel has a better talent for it than me.

  We were on the patio when Simon arrived. He showered and joined us, his eyes skimming my yellow sundress. I turned my back to finish laying the table, awkwardly smoothing the fabric over my hips.

  Simon was a creature of habit, too, and as usual he took a seat facing me while Laurel claimed the chair next to his.

  Olin took charge of the grill, forking the steaks onto a platter for Jessie to distribute. She started with Laurel.

  “Ever had venison before, honey?” Jessie asked her.

  Laurel frowned suspiciously. “What’s that?”

  “Deer meat,” I answered, cutting her steak for her. “Give it a taste.”

  She chewed cautiously at first, then nodded. “Good!”

  “Atta girl,” said Olin.

  “Mommy?” said Laurel.

  “Yeah, sweetie?”

  “I heard her again.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Tinkerbell.”

  My heart stuttered in my chest. I set down my knife and fork.

  “Not now,” I murmured, handing her the breadbasket with a warning shake of my head. “Here, have a slice.”

  Olin looked intrigued
. “What’s this?”

  “Nothing at all,” I said.

  “Tinkerbell,” said Laurel. “She’s up there.”

  She twisted in her seat and pointed high on the Mountain. Olin squinted, trying to make something out.

  “It’s nothing,” I repeated.

  Laurel pressed her lips in a stubborn line. “She was barking again,” she insisted. “I heard.”

  “Is this your pup, hon?” Jessie asked her. “The one that run off?”

  Laurel nodded. “I looked and I hollered, but she never came back.”

  “Now, that’s a shame,” said Jessie.

  “Mommy, we gotta go get her.”

  “Please stop, Laurel.”

  “But, Mommy—”

  “Laurel! Stop! Now!”

  She was shocked to silence. But I could see the fury brewing, every ounce of it plain on her face, until she broke into howls of misery.

  I took a deep breath and tried again, this time without the snap in my voice.

  “Tinkerbell got lost a long way from here,” I said. “She couldn’t have walked this far. In fact . . . In fact, I bet some other family took her in by now.”

  A lie is forgivable, I figured, if it hides a wicked truth. And I had enough to handle as it was, without the worry of that poor, wretched dog.

  Olin smiled at Laurel. “Why, that’s very likely,” he said. “Folks would take in a lost pup, quick as that.”

  Laurel didn’t look convinced, but the howls were trailing off to wet hiccups, and she wasn’t fussing anymore. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

  “Simon,” said Olin, “I hear you got yourself a new horse out at your place.”

  “Four-year-old gelding,” said Simon. “Underweight at the moment, but good form. He’ll fill out fine.”

  “Bring him over when he does.”

  “Or come see him yourself. It’s been a while since you and Jessie were up. And, Joanna, you haven’t seen my place yet. You and Laurel.”

  Before I could answer, Olin accepted for all of us. “You’ll need a corral, though,” he said. “Got any help?”

  Simon hesitated. He glanced uncertainly at me before answering. “Davey’s been lending a hand.”

  Olin and Jessie traded a queer look and fell silent. I’d never heard them—or Simon—ever mention anyone by the name of Davey before.

  Simon cleared his throat. “Till the corral’s finished, the horse boards close by. Grazes behind the cabin.”

  Laurel was looking curiously at Olin and Jessie. Even she could sense the shift in the air.

  “Who’s Davey?” she asked.

  More silence. Finally Olin spoke.

  “Why, a local boy,” he said lightly. “Lives on a ranch outside town. Takes on odd jobs to help out his folks. Smart as a whip. Good with his hands.”

  Jessie was nodding in agreement. From the description, I couldn’t see why the mention of the boy’s name would scupper the conversation. None of them offered more than that.

  I turned to Simon. “Do you have other horses?”

  “This is my first,” said Simon. “He’ll be a handful when he’s filled out. Do you ride?”

  “I took lessons one summer when I was a kid. English style. I had what they call horse fever—read every book on horses I could get my hands on. But I can’t say I’m a rider. Lessons ended before I got the hang of it.”

  “Why didn’t you keep it up?”

  Ending the lessons hadn’t been my idea. The summer I turned thirteen, I was living—yet again—with my Oma in her little house outside Taos. Every time my mother took on a new man, sooner or later she’d pack me off to my grandmother’s, which suited me fine. I guess when I was younger she meant to spare me the sight of strange men at the breakfast table. But as I grew older, she started to see me as competition.

  That particular summer, my mother and I were living in a town in west Texas, and the new man was an assistant city planner who laughed too much and drank too much and had sweaty palms that he liked to drape over my shoulder in a friendly sort of way, casual, as if he weren’t trying to run his fingers down the curve of my breast. One day my mother caught him at it, and the next I was on a Greyhound to Taos.

  There was a small stable near Oma’s house, and she signed me up for riding lessons. I took on babysitting jobs to help pay for them. It was a wonderful summer, until my mother’s affair flamed out, as they always did, and she packed a cooler with six-packs and drove up to fetch me—at first because she wanted someone to comfort her in her latest hour of need, but eventually because she needed somebody to blame.

  After that, we moved to another new town where my mother could put the booze and the past behind her. Start fresh. One more time.

  “Riding lessons . . . they’re expensive,” I said finally.

  “They are,” said Simon. “But there’s horse people round about that could help you take up where you left off. Olin here was a real rider.”

  “Good enough,” said Olin.

  “More than good enough,” Jessie said affectionately.

  Olin squeezed her hand. “A tale for another day. But if you’re up to it, Joanna, I could make a real cowgirl out of you.”

  * * *

  One morning not long after, I woke to the sound of whinnying. I belted my robe and headed to my bedroom window. There was a man on horseback below, speaking with Olin at the open gate of the corral.

  And the corral was no longer empty, but held four horses. I pulled on jeans and a shirt and hurried outside.

  “Mornin’, Joanna!” Olin called. “This here’s an old friend—Morgan Begay.”

  The man looked to be in his sixties, with a barrel chest, graying hair to his shoulders and deep brown eyes magnified by bottle-thick glasses. He wore a work shirt with a black vest and dungarees. Around his neck was a fetish necklace strung with polished stones carved into bear shapes.

  “Are these your horses?” I asked him.

  “From my herd.” His voice was deep, with a clipped accent.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “Begay’s from the other side of the Mountain,” Olin said. “He’ll be leavin’ these horses awhile. Wanna try one?”

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Which one you like?”

  It had been so long since I’d sat a horse, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t just mount up and slide off the other side again. I took a step back.

  “Buck up, now,” said Olin.

  I looked the horses over. The first three were a handsome blood bay, a pinto and a big roan.

  But the fourth horse was a sleek liver chestnut—a hand or two smaller than the others, with the swan neck and small, shapely head of an Arabian.

  When I was thirteen, this had been my dream horse, like Lula’s Eldorado.

  “He’s a beauty,” Olin said, following my gaze. “Name’s—what’s he called, Begay?”

  “Nastas.”

  “That’s right—Nastas. What’s it mean in Navajo? ‘Leg-Breaker’? Or ‘Never Been Rode’?”

  I laughed. “Sure it doesn’t mean ‘Call an Ambulance’?”

  “Atta girl,” Olin said. “Actually, it means ‘Curve Like Foxtail Grass,’ for that neck of his. Come on over and I’ll make the introductions.”

  Begay had already dismounted and was leading Nastas to the gate where I stood. The horse seemed much bigger up close. His ears swiveled at the sound of my voice.

  “Good boy,” I murmured nervously, running my hand down the firm muscles of his neck. Olin handed me a carrot, and I held it to the horse’s muzzle until he snorted and grabbed it in his teeth. All the while, Begay was settling a blanket on the horse’s back, then a saddle. He cinched it snug.

  “His mouth is soft, so easy on the bit,” Begay said as he worked. “Ask him—don’t tell him. He knows.”


  “Okay, boy,” I murmured. “I’ll go easy on you if you go easy on me.”

  “All set?” Olin asked, gripping the bridle. “Don’t worry—he likes you.”

  “Yeah?” I said shakily. “Let’s see him show it.”

  I stepped to the side and slid my left foot into the stirrup, grabbed a handful of mane and pulled myself into the saddle. While Begay adjusted the stirrups, I ran through those old riding lessons in my head—back straight, toes up, heels down.

  “Take the reins in your left hand—this is Western style, not English,” Olin said. “Grip ’em in front of you. Not too tight. That’s right.”

  Begay led the horse forward at a slow walk. We moved halfway around the corral like that, till he let go and moved to the side. Then it was just me and the horse making a circuit all by ourselves.

  “How’s it feel?” Olin called out.

  I smiled. “Like riding a bicycle. A really big bicycle.”

  “Doin’ good,” Olin said. “Ready for the lesson?”

  “I thought this was it,” I said.

  He and Begay laughed.

  “Aw, now, you can do better’n this,” said Olin.

  Begay approached again. He patted the horse’s neck and said something in a language I couldn’t understand. Then he looked up at me.

  “Listen to Olin,” he said. “You can do better.”

  He stood back to give the horse a light slap across the flank, and Nastas set off at a hard trot that jarred every bone in my body. In desperation I tried to post, which I knew wasn’t Western, either. Olin called out for me to sit and relax. Find the rhythm.

  Instead, I pulled on the reins to make it stop before I could fall off. Nastas shook his head, his mane flying. He was disappointed; he wanted to run. I had a feeling this wouldn’t end well.

  “Whoa, boy.” Olin was grabbing the bridle again as Nastas ground to a halt. “You’re fightin’ ’im, Joanna.”